Today, U.S. Secretary State John Kerry, age 70, had his voice heard during the Syria “peace” conference in Switzerland, in which he reiterated the State Department’s position that Bashar al-Assad must leave office by “mutual consent.” As reported by the New York Times:

Putting the best face on the meeting, Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters on Wednesday night that it was significant that senior diplomats from 40 countries and organizations had gathered in the lakeside Swiss city of Montreux, to initiate the conference. Mr. Kerry insisted that he had always known that the talks would be “tough” and described the conference as a “process,” which he implied could last for months or even years.

Since Secretary Kerry, age 70, has had his voice today on how to respond to the atrocities of the Assad regime, I would like to use this post at Tikkun Daily to give voice to Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb, who was arrested, tortured, mutilated and killed by the Assad regime in 2011.

Hamza was 13 years old.

We could not heal and repair the world in time for Hamza and so many others around the globe, or even implement already established, and basic, international law to spare his short life, and his indescribable suffering.

Thus, the only voice he has to give us is from his perch in heaven, and through his before and after photos of his torture and murder:

5 Responses to “An Old Voice, A Young Voice, On the Highly Unfashionable Word Called Evil”

What terrible crime could this innocent 13-year old boy have perpetrated that would warrant such indescribable human suffering and death at the hands of the satanic Assad regime? How many more victims have suffered the same fate? In this age of instantaneous communication how could the world not learn of this until now?
I second Craig Wiesner’s question about learning more about this boy’s story.

“Hamza lived with his parents in village of al-Jeezah and had enjoyed watching his homing pigeons fly above his house since drought had left him unable to enjoy swimming. He had a reputation for being generous. ‘He would often ask his parents for money to give to the poor. I remember once he wanted to give someone 100 Syrian Pounds ($2), and his family said it was too much. But Hamza said, ‘I have a bed and food while that guy has nothing.’ And so he persuaded his parents to give the poor man the 100,” his cousin told Al Jazeera.”

Members of the Syrian opposition have posted video of Hamza’s heinously tortured and genitally mutilated body on Youtube here, viewer discretion advised:

My concern is that we, as a country, are not only losing the lessons of WWII, but we are learning the wrong lessons of the post-9/11 era.

The Iraq War launched in March, 2003 was a monumental moral travesty, with Bush-Cheney still exploiting the anger and fear of Americans after 9/11. What Chelsea Manning revealed was that the military that supposedly represented what we thought were our American values, was anything but. That institution, the U.S. military, has definitely created more enemies for our nation than we had before.

The U.S. military must be reformed to reflect true democratic, and pro-human being, pro-human dignity values – not macho-ism and bloodlust. By the same token, we cannot turn a blind-eye to the atrocities taking place, like those in Syria.

When I see horrific images like that of Hamza’s tortured body, or when I view the still-chilling images from the Abu Graib prison from ten years ago, my prayer is that Americans will – on a moral level – figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time, and demand that our legislators in Congress and the president do the same.

We live in a world of torture, sadism, bloodlust and tyrannical impulses from country to country, continent to continent. God’s creation, most especially the gift of human life, is too precious to satisfy ourselves with one-note levels of political dissent.

And by the way, any form of political dissent that starts off with “And the Israel Lobby does this that and the other” is the embodiment of one-note political dissent. Not to mention stupidity.

I dare say. Invading Iraq was a bad idea but Saddam stood accused of visiting many atrocities on his own people. Who can forget that he used had on the Kurds. Now we are faced with the ongoing atrocities of Assad. This is a problem that demandd world intervention, not exclusive US intervention. The world really has learned little from WW 2 seeing as mass murder was initially ignored in Rwanda and Bosnia.

I agree with your analysis here, both on the 2003 Iraq war and the foreign policy failure post-Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons. I also agree that the world community has an obligation to intervene, not sit back, and watch these horrific atrocities unfold.

Regarding Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons attacks on the Kurds of Halabja in 1988, I asked Ambassador Tom Pickering, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the first Gulf War, about precisely that issue in my Tikkun Daily interview from last November.

Here’s a snippet:

TV: You were U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded a sovereign country, Kuwait, in violation of the United Nations Charter. Three years prior, Saddam Hussein committed crimes against humanity by using chemical weapons on the Iraqi Kurdish civilians of Halabja, killing between 3,200 and 5,000 people. Yet the post-war sanctions on Saddam Hussein were condemned in many corners of the globe as causing more Iraqi civilian suffering than affording regional security.

If you had to pinpoint a key moment in the history of U.S. policy toward Saddam Hussein, a moment when an alternative U.S. foreign policy stroke could have prevented his ability to trigger so much war and suffering, along with what many believe were brutal and unjustified counter-measures by the United States, when would that moment have been?

TP: Your question on changing Saddam in the lead of Iraq or the course of his rule is a challenging one. I know of no point at which that might have been possible.

It is true that US support for him and his country against Iran during the war of the 1980s may have encouraged him to believe he could get more help from the US in the future. But I do not believe the opposite was true….

A question all of us must constantly ask: Are we repeating the same mistakes with regard to the sadistic Assad regime that killed and tortured little Hamza and thousands of others? The whole interview can be read here: